Tuesday, Twitter announced an update that will have an impact on its mobile apps for both iPhone and Android. TechCrunch reports that Twitter will introduce additional “Promoted Products” to its mobile platform, broken into two categories: Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets. While these features have been available on the web

New service hashtagmom, or #mom, knows you don’t want to have to drop everything the second you arrive somewhere so mom will know you arrived safely. With the company’s Twilio/FourSquare API service, a pleasant automated voice can make contact for you, letting mom know that you’re doing fine. Hashtagmom eases

If you’ve been looking for a supercharged social travel app that is location aware and fully GPS compatible, get hip to HipGeo. According to Mike Richard of the blog Vagabondish, HipGeo sports some of the best features of Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, rolled into one. The GPS serendipity of place

If you find the prospect of reading an email longer than two or three sentences painful, consider Shortmail. This new Twitter-like iPhone app from 410 Labs in Baltimore, Md., caters to busy professionals, the impatient and the attention deficit disordered in equal measure. All messages are capped at 500 characters.

A second executive at Twitter has left within eight days, prompting many to wonder what is going on at the social networking icon. TechCrunch speculates that there may be a schism between the management styles of CEO Dick Costolo and Chairman Jack Dorsey, causing tension among the ranks of the

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, who, with three friends, took on Facebook by creating the social networking site Diaspora, died Saturday, Nov. 12, at the age of 22. The cause of death has not yet been released. The news was broken by TechCrunch. Social networking privacy Zhitomirskiy, along with three fellow students at

In a continuation of its design overhaul, Google rolled out its standalone Gmail app for iOS on Wednesday, but you won’t be able to find it today. The app was pulled almost immediately due to a flood of complaints. Supposed to improve mobile Gmail The app was designed to give